


Schmoozing

by periwinklepromise



Series: Femslash February 2019 [11]
Category: Friends (TV)
Genre: Canon Jewish Character, F/F, Femslash, Femslash February 2019, Getting Brunch, Getting Together, Gratuitous use of Yiddish by an author who is definitely not fluent, Pesach | Passover, Purim, Purim Katan, Shabbat | Sabbath | Sabt, The Pesach Discourse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2019-10-24 04:36:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17697761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/periwinklepromise/pseuds/periwinklepromise
Summary: “Oh. My. Gawd. Monica?”A series of conversations about how much Janice and Monica love being Jewish lesbians.





	1. Shabbos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to remember that these characters would call it Shabbos not Shabbat, so I hope you all appreciate my hard work and dedication to veracity.

Janice was able to slip into the shul with a family going in just ahead of her. She schmoozed inside the door with some old friends from around Chelsea until she heard a familiar voice go, “Oh, I'm such a schlimazel, I can't believe I forgot my yarmulke.”

Janice whirled around and gasped, clutching at her chest. “Oh. My. G _aw_ d. _Monica_?”

Yep. That was her. Monica Geller, next-door neighbor for Janice's most obsessively reoccurring mistake Chandler Bing, standing in this shul when she had never been here before, Janice was sure of it. She looked good, Janice noticed distantly. She had grown out her bangs.

“Janice! Gut Shabbos!” Monica, to her credit, did seem genuinely pleased to see her – Janice had noticed how Chandler's friends reacted to her. 

“Gut Shabbos,” she responded automatically, pulling Monica close at patting on her shoulders. “How _are_ you, it's been forever!”

“Yeah, it has,” she said a little awkwardly, slipping out of the grip and holding Janice's hands instead. “I'm good, I'm good. You?”

Janice sighed and rolled her eyes, but she was grinning and she knew it. “I'm divorced,” she informed, flashing her ringless hand. 

“Oh, that's too bad,” Monica sympathized, and then offered the string of normal platitudes.

“No, no, it's better this way,” she reassured her. “That's what I get for taking Chandler's advice!” She laughed at her own joke, but honestly, what had she been thinking? “Here, have my scarf,” she said, unwinding it and passing it over. “It should be big enough.” Monica wound it around her head, and she should really wear cheetah print more often, it looked just stunning. “Would you like to sit together? Or, who are you here with?”

Monica gestured behind her in explanation. “I'm visiting the Levines. But I'll sit with you. Dr Levine gets so mad every time he remembers I won't call G-d a 'he',” she chuckled.

Janice cackled with her. Monica was so refreshing. “So are you Reform then?”

“Of course. Are you not?”

Janice shrugged. “My ex husband was Conservative. I liked some of it. Would have liked it more if he hadn't cheated so much,” she giggled.

Monica winced.

“No, no, it's okay. Really. What are you doing after? Do you have dinner plans?” Janice clapped her hands at the idea.

Monica laughed, but she looked a little sad. “Cholent for one. Rachel is at her father's for the weekend, so I am eating alone,” she admitted. 

“Ooh, can I join you? I love cholent! But how long has it been cooking, because I can't eat it if it's less than five hours.”

Monica beamed, and then her smile moved to a smirk when she heard Janice's preferences. “Seven, once we get there.”

“Then it's a date!”

Monica smiled, soft and slow. “It's a date.”


	2. Purim Katan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for a small celebration

Janice had put this off for a while, but now she was running out of time, so she figured it was time to get it over with. She called up her girlfriend when she got home from work. 

Monica answered on the second ring. 

“Do you have any plans for this Wednesday?” she blurted out before she could lose her nerve. 

“No?” Monica sounded a little confused, which was only fair. “Why, do you want to do something?”

“I was wondering if you'd like to go to brunch.” There, that was a perfectly polite way of suggesting the date.

“What's the occasion?”

Janice scrunched up her face in distaste. This was the awkward part. “Well. It's a pregnant year, so we're in Adar I right now...”

“So it's the appetizer Purim! What's that called again? Purim... Purim cat... Purim...”

“Purim Katan,” Janice corrected her easily. “Appetizer Purim?”

“Hey, I'm a chef,” Monica defended. “Little holiday before the big holiday. An appetizer.”

Janice laughed, more out of relief than anything else. “I wasn't sure you'd know about it. Not many people celebrate.”

“How do we celebrate, anyway?”

“By eating a slightly larger meal than normal.”

Silence rang through the phone.

“That's it? You eat a slightly larger meal?”

Janice smiled at how underwhelmed Monica sounded. “Well, we don't want to celebrate too much. It would put off our appetites for Entrée Purim.”

Monica giggled, and a strange shuffling came from the phone, like she was moving around papers. “So what time?”

“Let's say eleven. Bagels and lox okay?”

“Well, it's not the fanciest appetizer I've ever had. But it'll do.”


	3. Purim

Monica and Janice slumped down into the throw pillows Monica insisted on keeping everywhere, giggling like schoolgirls. It was a good thing their glasses were empty again, or they'd have spilled wine on the area rug. 

“And, and then--” Janice let out another peal, and Monica had to hide in the hollow of her neck to stop herself from falling into it again, wanting desperately to catch her breath. “Then he ran _right_ into the doorway and smacked himself in the head right between the eyes!” She guffawed, and Monica lost the battle and fell into giggles again. 

“Serves him right,” she declared, the casual mean-spritedness totally in keeping with the holiday. Ross still had a hard time with knowing his baby sister was a lesbian, and dealing with her dating a woman he had also dated – if only for a short, disastrous period of time. So Ross braining himself on a door in front of Janice seemed fair enough.

“Oh, you love him, he's your brother.”

“Only because I have to, otherwise, I'd hate his guts,” Monica insisted, knowing her girlfriend would see through the ruse. Janice just leveled her with a heavy look that set them both off into ripples of laughter again. 

“Do we have more hamentaschen?” Janice asked, a little wobbly as she tried to straighten herself back up to peer over at Monica's dining room table. 

“Do we have more wine?” Monica countered as dry as she could manage, standing up mostly straight and picking up the platter to bring over into the living room. She could deal with crumbies later. And then she brought over the bottle of red they were working on - she loved wine, how warm it made her feel. “Can't believe you think these things are his _ears_ , that is so ridiculous.”

“They are so clearly his ears, _you're_ ridiculous.” Janice picked up a chocolate one and held it up to her own ear. “See?”

“They are so clearly his stupid little hat!” Monica insisted. She tried to balance a strawberry-flavored one on her head and failed miserably. 

They'd found out about the other's long-held beliefs the week before while buying supplies, and they hadn't been able to let that go. Rachel, of course, said they were shaped after his hat too, but they had also asked Janice's friend Michael who said that they were to ridicule Haman's pockets somehow, so the argument was probably never going to be settled.

Jews weren't well known for settling on only one right answer anyway.


	4. Pesach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The One With The Discourse

They were going around in circles now. 

“There's way more than five!” Monica insisted. “Wheat, oats, rice, corn-”

“Rice and corn are _not_ chametz!” Janice groaned and threw her hands up to tangle into her hair. 

“Yes, they are!” Monica stood and stormed over to the other side of the coffetable, propping her fists on her hips. 

Janice let out a laugh that would have been a lot longer if Monica hadn't glared at her viciously to cut her off. “Monica, you are the best chef I have ever met. How could you _poss_ ibly think rice goes into bread?”

“It could!” Monica defended quickly. “Rice flour exists!”

Janice rolled her eyes. “So does almond flour. Are almonds chametz now? The ancient Jews fled Egypt with almond flour, did they?” Janice snatched up Monica's phone and began punching in her rabbi's office number. She'd memorized it back when she was going through her divorce and needed the extra support.

She needed that support again, only this time it wasn't emotional, it was just to prove she was _right_. 

“What are you doing?” Monica hissed, but Janice held up a finger to silence her. 

Then she struggled to put the phone on speaker before her rabbi answered. “Shalom, Rabbi, it's Janice Litman nee Hosenstein. I was wondering if you could settle something for me. What all is included in chametz? You know, assuming the food's been allowed to rise.”

There was a short pause, and what sounded like a mostly-muffled sigh. “Wheat, barley, oats, rye, and spelt. If any of these are mixed with water and allowed to ferment, they become chametz, and we are forbidden to partake or benefit from them during Pesach.”

It occurred to Janice that Jacob probably had had to deal with this question quite a bit in the last week. “And what about the other stuff, rice and corn and all that?” Janice leveled a look at Monica with a smugly raised eyebrow.

“While kitniyot are often avoided during Pesach by our fellow Ashkenazim, it is not required of us. But minhagim are important to respect, Janice. If those in your life avoid kitniyot during Pesach, they are honoring their family's traditions. This is acceptable, even if kitniyot are not chametz.”

Monica had the smug look now.

Janice deflated a bit. “Thank you, Rabbi.”

“Thank you, Janice. Shalom.”

“Shalom,” she replied out of habit.

Jacob clicked off, and Janice gingerly placed the phone back down on the base unit. “So. Um.”

“So I was right,” Monica concluded.

“You were not,” she snapped right back. “You heard him, rice is _not_ chametz.” She was definitely right about that.

“But you should still respect it.”

Janice sighed and put her hands up in concession. “Would you like me to cut it out next week too?”

Monica took her seat back on the couch next to Janice. “You don't have to if you don't want to.”

“I don't want to,” Janice was quick to tell her. 

“Then you don't have to.”

Janice tried to bite it back, but she failed. “Neither do you. Technically.”

“But I will,” Monica said with a shrug. “It's what my family does.”

“Then I can learn to accept that, I guess.” Janice reached her arms out slowly, and Monica burrowed close, tucking into her hair. “Wait.”

“What?” Monica mumbled into her neck.

“You can still eat potatoes, right?”

“...Yeah?”

“Okay.” Janice relaxed again. “Then that's okay.”


End file.
